When you work in Blend, you can move windows around within Blend, or move them outside of the main Blend GUI. Blend restores the last known arrangements of windows when you start up again. You can also save a particular arrangement of windows, so that you can later restore the same arrangement. These saved configurations are known as workspaces.

To save your current window configuration, select Save as New Workspace, under the Window menu. You’ll be asked to give the new workspace a name.

After creating a new workspace, you can switch between it and other workspaces by selecting a workspace under the Workspaces submenu in the Window menu.

You’ll notice that there are two preexisting workspaces: Design and Animation. Design is the default workspace that shows up when you first start Blend. Animation puts the Objects and Timeline window below the artboard so that storyboard timelines can be wider.

You can easily move windows around in Blend, customizing the layout of your workspace. You can even move a window outside of the main Blend window. This can be especially handy if you have more than one monitor, since you can maximize the Blend GUI on one monitor and move one or more panels to the other monitor.

The image below shows a screen capture showing two monitors. The Tools panel and the artboard are contained in the main Blend window, which is maximized to fill the rightmost monitor. A number of other windows have been moved outside of the Blend GUI, onto the leftmost monitor.

While working in Blend, there are a number of different windows (panels) that you work with. The image below shows the default configuration, with the Tools panel on the far left, and another panel with Projects/Assets/Triggers/States tabs, etc.

You can move any of these windows around within Blend, except for the artboard (the area in the center of the screen that contains the Design and XAML views. The artboard will take up all remaining space not used by other windows.

To move a window, left-click and drag it to the desired location. For example, we can move the panel containing the Objects and Timeline tab, so that it sits below the panel containing the Properties tab.

You can also left-click and drag on a particular tab, to move it to another panel. (E.g. Move Resources tab down next to Objects and Timeline).

Blend makes all properties of a user interface element available for editing via the Propertiespanel. The properties panel is laid out in a way that makes finding a particular property fairly easy. But if you’re having trouble finding a property and you know a portion of the property’s name, you can use the search box to search for the property.

In the example below, we select a Label control and then enter “align” into the search box. We then see all of the properties that apply to a Label and have “align” as part of the property’s name.